Lost Bitcoins in Bitcoin Core wallet - what now?

[sjyi]

So I'm guessing you could not find the tx information.

If you still have your address, you could at least find out if it is still is stuck.

People worry about the online wallet, but it would helpful in this scenario.

[1714820644]

1714820644

[1714820644]

1714820644

[1714820644]

1714820644

[sexxy69]

So I'm guessing you could not find the tx information.

If you still have your address, you could at least find out if it is still is stuck.

People worry about the online wallet, but it would helpful in this scenario.

Nope. I only have the receiving address but that's proven useless.

I will be leaving the Bitcoin Core client on overnight to see if anything is stuck in the mempool.dat file but I highly doubt it. Looks like ~Satoshi didn't plan for large scale integration.

[notaek]

- Bitcoin Core was opened
- synced and up to date
- I sent Bitcoins using the built in features and used twice the minimal transaction fee
- Confirmation message popped up and they were sent

Everything upto this point, all the steps you performed are correct.

- I went and deleted wallet.dat as I no longer needed this wallet

You have made a serious blunder here. You should never remove wallet.dat ever, unless any unconfirmed transaction(s) goes through, or unless you have noted down the raw transaction seperately.

- Thought popped into my brain that made me wonder how do these bitcoins reach their destination

Your wallet will relay your pending transactions (if any) through peer nodes unless it's confirmed. By deleting wallet.dat, your wallet no longer is able to perform that.

- I realized bitcoin technology is really bad

No, it isn't. Don't blame your fault on the underlying technology which works excellent for everyone. Even Satoshi stated this (in verbatim):

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

- Now I am worried about my bitcoins

Its been a good 10 hours and they are yet to reach their destination....
Does anyone know if they will get their eventually? Or have I just lost a couple of coins?

It's gone, unless you either remember the transaction ID or have saved the raw transaction details for reference.

I've later read somewhere on the Internet that the Bitcoin Core client should be kept open so that it keeps rebroadcasting the transactions, but since I've deleted the wallet thinking everything would run smoothly, I am unable to do so.

Keeping the client open will help in subsequent re-broadcasts of your pending transactions, generally after every hour. In this case, I presume your transaction got flushed by the peer nodes and your client is unable to re-broadcast it.

You are now left with re-broadcasting the transaction manually.

I've never really looked into bitcoin technology all that much but now that I've come across this I can't help but mention that the original idea was good, though mass scale practicality, this is a fail coin... just look at how torrents work... this pretty much sums up how transactions in the network work. I just hope I ain't as smart and the coins will come through sooner than later, although I can't help but see how impractical bitcoin really is in the real world.

PS. Bitcoin Core sucks big time, especially for something that has been around for so long and has grown in value so much, it misses so many end user features, things that every crypto wallet should have in order to be effective for real world use.

Just because you screwed up doesn't imply the whole system "sucks". It never will.

Bitcoin protocol is quite the same as BitTorrent protocol. The only difference is that, on the Bitcoin network people value only coins that are "unspent" as marked by the "the most current and heaviest blockchain". The "spent" coins continue to exist, but nobody gives them any value, unlike that of BitTorrent network, where both the files in sender's and receiver's clients are still playable and valuable at the same time.

[dinofelis]

I just finished with a deep scan and it did not find anything. IMO most of you think technology is better than it actually is.

I will give it a few days but if my understanding of how the bitcoin technology actually works is correct then the coins are lost and the technology isn't as great as some of you may think it is. If those coins don't come through the simple answer would be that the Bitcoin network has blind spots which centralize the network as to avoid them you need to be well connected with other peers.

Well, I never used bitcoin core's wallet to hold actually bitcoin.  I ran a full node for years, but with an empty wallet, because when I started with bitcoin, and I learned that core's wallet didn't have hierarchical deterministic keys (HD), I didn't want to use it for exactly the danger that you underwent.  I prefer electrum as a wallet, because that is, like almost all other wallets, and like almost all other *crypto*, using a HD key system.  But I'm surprised because I read that bitcoin core DID integrate such an HD system since June 2016.
An HD wallet can derive all its private keys from a single pass phrase, which is something you have to put on a piece of paper and put in your safe.  With that pass phrase, you can reconstruct all keys.  So even if your wallet file gets corrupted, you can always find them back.  Of course, you have to protect that piece of paper against theft !  But you do not depend on electronics to keep your coins.

With simple random wallets, each key is a random number, saved ONLY in the wallet file.  If that gets lost, you're done.  But of course, you were already in very great danger by not having a *back up*!  That's crazy.  You don't have a backup of your computer ?  The reason why simple wallets are problematic, is that between backups, you might use new addresses (new keys), which could get lost if the disk gets damaged, or the file gets damaged, between backups.  This is why I don't like them.  You have a backed-up wallet, you do a payment, it generates a new return address, you disk breaks down, and you've lost all your coins, because the backup was too old (namely 10 minutes before the payment).  With a HD wallet, that's no problem, from the pass phrase (in the wallet and on your piece of paper), it can find all keys again.

So, you're the victim of 2 simultaneous problems: not using a HD wallet, and not having made a backup.  The first thing is a technology problem, the second is simply crazy.  You never ask yourself: if 2 minutes from now, my disk is dead, what will I do  ?

[HCP]

I thought that bitcoin core had HD wallet integration since June 2016...

It HAS had HD Wallet integration... assuming you created your wallet AFTER it was introduced and you have the "HD" icon in the bottom right corner, you have an HD wallet:

Well, I never used bitcoin core's wallet to hold actually bitcoin.  I ran a full node for years, but with an empty wallet, because when I started with bitcoin, and I learned that core's wallet didn't have hierarchical deterministic keys (HD), I didn't want to use it for exactly the danger that you underwent.  I prefer electrum as a wallet, because that is, like almost all other wallets, and like almost all other *crypto*, using a HD key system.  But I'm surprised because I read that bitcoin core DID integrate such an HD system since June 2016.
An HD wallet can derive all its private keys from a single pass phrase, which is something you have to put on a piece of paper and put in your safe.  With that pass phrase, you can reconstruct all keys.  So even if your wallet file gets corrupted, you can always find them back.  Of course, you have to protect that piece of paper against theft !  But you do not depend on electronics to keep your coins.

Not quite 100% accurate... an HD wallet can derive all it's private keys from a single "seed". The "seed" (like Bitcoin private keys) is just a really really REALLY big number. The 12/24 word seed mnemonic (aka seed phrase, aka wallet words, aka seed words etc) that you're thinking of is simply one way to represent this "seed" and is specified in BIP39 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki)

Bitcoin Core does NOT use BIP39 seed mnemonic phrases to backup the seed/wallet. And there is no (known?) way to extract the seed from a Bitcoin Core wallet. Instead, you are meant to take a backup of the wallet file itself. Any copy of the wallet file will enable you to generate all future addresses.

However, one very important thing to note is that Bitcoin Core actually CHANGES the (hidden) seed if you encrypt the file (by default, the wallet file isn't encrypted) or you change the encryption password... so one must remember to take a new backup every time the password is changed (or set for the first time).

So, you're the victim of 2 simultaneous problems: not using a HD wallet, and not having made a backup.  The first thing is a technology problem, the second is simply crazy.  You never ask yourself: if 2 minutes from now, my disk is dead, what will I do  ?

OP may have been using an HD wallet (depends on how old their Bitcoin Core wallet is)... but yes, if they have not made a backup, that is a grave mistake.

[sexxy69]

You never ask yourself: if 2 minutes from now, my disk is dead, what will I do  ?

Then Samsung and Seagate would both be out of business.

[Thirdspace]

I have the original mempool.dat file. Would I be able to find anything related to the transactions in this?

Maybe. It may contain your own unconfirmed transaction, but I can't tell you how to read it from there. I wouldn't delete it for now, and don't use it without making a copy first.

I assume this mempool.dat is the only thing left from your old wallet, make copy of the mempool.dat before trying this
If you want to try, on console type getrawmempool then check one by one by typing getrawtransaction txid
hopefully one of the rawtx is your unconfirmed transaction, and save this rawtx on text file or broadcast it